


he is the lamb and she is the lion

by meios



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Flidais is pretty amazing right, Flower Magic, Pre-Relationship, The Fade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-17
Updated: 2015-01-17
Packaged: 2018-03-07 22:17:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3185237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meios/pseuds/meios
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Flidais does not reach out to touch him, and neither does he. She does not re-light the fire when it begins to dwindle. She looks up, though, to find him gazing at her, and the elf does not blush, does not stammer, only smiles, gentle. “You deserve to walk the Fade without terrors hounding your steps, Commander.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	he is the lamb and she is the lion

**Author's Note:**

> for an anonymous prompt that was given to me on tumblr:
> 
> "I hope this isn't too out of line to ask and please don't feel obligated! - I found your tumblr via your writing on the DAI kink meme, I adore your Inquisitor, and if you might be so inclined I would love to read about the beginning of Flidais' and Cullen's relationship. I'd have prompted you there instead of here but we're in fill-a-thon mode again now. So - if you ever have the inspiration - you have an audience!"

She hums songs of old next to the campfire beside Varric’s tent as she weaves the stems of plants without a name together. They are pliant in her hands, soft like the sap of a great tree; she makes the green parts glow with a smile, her fingertips warming and cooling intermittently.  
  
She does this often, infrequently accompanied by Solas, who studies the unorthodox use of magic that she displays. He asks,  _have you been doing this for long_ , and she always answers,  _since I was a small child_. It is repetition, slow and steady, with her eyes partially lidded, her smile stretching the tiny scar on her lip, right beside the light green piece of  _vallaslin_  that crawls down to her chin.  
  
Sometimes, she is joined by Varric, who listens to her tales of  _shemlen_  and wandering, of attempts to reclaim elven history and small celebrations in honor of their Creators. He smokes a pipe during these times, sharing stories of his own when she can no longer think of any. He is a comfort, and she says this a few times; the dwarf gives her a warm smile, a hand on her head, mussing her hair with a little fervor.  
  
Her laughter is contagious.  
  
“May I interrupt for a moment?” He is strong and tall, a force of reckoning, a wall of muscle and bone wielding a sword. Once, she may have been scared of him, but now, he is a sheep in lion’s clothing: offering protection, trust, without asking for anything in return. His eyes are gold, the remnant of a wound upon his mouth, (and she finds herself, once or twice, wondering if she could have prevented that from happening, had times been different, had she been there,) but he shakes.  
  
He is an earthquake, their commander, and she is a fault line.  
  
She does not ask about it because he does not mention it, and his health is his business, for now, unless the paleness of his skin, the slight twitch in his eyebrow, a stammer in his voice does not disappear in a few more months. She knows that he rarely sleeps, awakening and wandering the halls of the Haven chantry to sometimes catch him praying, all murmurs, private words with his god. She is glad that the  _shemlen_  have something to believe in.  
  
She nods, and waves a little as Sera hops up, grinning, and disappears. The other elf does that a lot, it seems, and she is not entirely sure how to feel about it yet.  
  
“What can I do for you, Commander?” she asks, patting the now deserted space next to her, one of her hands always touching the glowing greens. “Sit down,” she adds needlessly, “if it pleases you.”  
  
“Is that insistence or a simple offer, Herald?” the commander responds, dropping to his knees and then getting more comfortable. She glances at him with a smirk, but his eyes are glued to her hands.  
  
She says, “You can answer that for yourself.”  
  
“I suppose I can.”  
  
There are a few moments of silence, breaths visible even against the fire, the scars in the heavens a slight lime tinge to the overcast sky. The sun is rare here, and the moon: even rarer, and a very important part of her misses them both. She does not mention this. She only repeats, “What can I do for you, Commander?”  
  
He jumps, and she smiles a little, vaguely wondering if the pauldrons draped over his shoulders keep him warm, as he tremors even more violently than normally for a moment. He makes a noise that she does not register, his hand reaching up to rest at the back of his neck.  
  
The commander has secrets and demons and he has seen things that many people should not, as Sister Leliana had explained one evening over a sort of broth that she had never tasted before. She can taste the magicks that have harmed him on the bad days where the mark on her left hand aches and sparks; it is, though, not her place to offer assistance in something that has very little to do with her.  
  
Still, though, she wishes that she could take it away, at least for a little while.  
  
“Those plants,” he begins, and his voice takes on the breathiness of a child inquiring about something possibly imaginary, a legend, a dream. “I’ve been wondering, I must confess, about what you’re doing with them.”  
  
She hums the beginning of a song whose name has been lost. “Many things.”  
  
“Such as?”  
  
“I’ll make you a deal, Commander,” the Herald says, resting the herbs upon her lap, fingertips still gracing them as she turns some to face him, the human, who looks at her with a raise eyebrow, a crooked smile on his lips. She had asked him a few questions about the Templars before, taking the leap into flirting, stopping when he became uncomfortable, apologizing, only to receive another type of smile than what she is accustomed to. He had waved away her concerns, laughing, setting her at ease once more. He is good at doing that. “If I tell you, will you finally address me by my given name, rather than just a title?”  
  
He chuckles, and she adores the sound—it makes him sound younger, more alive, more like a boy than a man that has grown up too fast. “Only if you do so for me.”  
  
“Oh, but I do so enjoy referring to you as  _Commander_.”  
  
“I’m aware.”  
  
She grins, and says his name nonetheless: “Cullen.”  
  
And he says, “Flidais,” in return. And she likes it.  
  
Her gaze drops back to her lap, where the stems and the leaves twinkle like star-shine, wreathes hung over the trees, all fairy lights and friendly wisps, and she picks it up, completes the ring with the nimblest motion of the fingers. “When I was a child,” she begins, “I had terrible nightmares. Wolves chased me, hunters grabbed me, demons tantalized my feelings and taunted me about my thoughts. I believed that nothing was safe for me anymore, especially as my magic came through, in a way that nearly devastated me. I wasn’t ready; I did not think that I was strong enough.”  
  
Flidais meets his gaze as she takes a pause, a breath, allowing a small flame to erupt from her finger to throw at the dying fire. It bursts into life once more, like Elgar’nan’s orb, like Mythal’s rock. He is listening to her, and she is thankful that he only flinches a little at the elements bending to her will.  
  
“But you were, obviously,” Cullen supplies. There is a chuckle at that, barely audible, nothing more than a slight exhalation, a permeable lilt within the lull of conversation.  
  
“Not for many more years would I be able to boast about any kind of strength, no. My Keeper attempted everything from allowing me to sleep near her for a couple of days to performing rituals that normally work on mages to ward off things that would otherwise hurt them. But nothing worked.” Flidais shrugs some, bringing a blossom the size of her palm to her lips, kissing each petal. They grow cold to the touch, soothing to the forehead, to pains brought on from fitful rests. “Keeper Deshanna met me in the Fade one night. She sat with me, a few candles in the dense forest, warding off predators until morning. She watched me weave, taught me words in elvish that I had wondered about for ages.”  
  
She had whispered them to her without opening her mouth, offering comfort in the darkness, a single night’s sleep for the child too close to the Fade. Flidais can remember, warmly, the laugh lines on soft skin, tired eyes and a gentle smile, the manner in which she spoke, as if she was always telling a story that no one else should hear.  
  
“Keeper Deshanna asked me where I’d learned to do this, near sunrise,” continues the elf, holding up the ring of greens and whites and purples. “‘From the  _elgar’en_ ,  _hahren_.’ ‘Are you certain they were spirits,  _da’len_?’ ‘Of course!’ ‘How?’” Flidais smiles a very tiny smile, a twitch of the corners of her mouth, and, perhaps, it is a bit sad, whimsical. “‘Because I listened when they talked to me.’ ‘What did they say?’ ‘They told me about the past ’n present and about the lady who’s gonna save us all before the year ends. They know about Arlathan and Halamshiral and they told me stories about Mythal,  _hahren_! They told me all sorts of stories!’ And I can remember the way that she looked at me after that, after we’d both woken up. The same thing had happened to her when she’d been ten.”  
  
“You knew about the Hero of Fereldan before—?” Cullen’s brow furrows, and she wonders, for a fragment of a second, whether or not she has shared too much. He shakes his head, though, snorting a bite of a laugh. “That’s—how?”  
  
“The Fade. It’s a part of mages, it’s a part of magic, and the more connected you are, the more susceptible you are. Had I been part of a Circle, I suspect I’d have been made Tranquil.” Any memory of a smile disappears from Cullen’s mouth, and Flidais suddenly misses it. “But this is apparently common amongst Dalish mages. I’m not special.”  
  
“I disagree.”  
  
She nods once in thanks, laughing. His expression is pleased, his gaze at peace.  
  
“You never explained the flowers, though.”  
  
“I was getting to that, you impatient man,” chastises Flidais, and the light-heartedness returns to the atmosphere. “One of the spirits wove roses and daffodils around my head, and she made them glow. She said that those keep demons away. I asked about more, took notes after I woke up, memorized the words to chant in my head as I create and imbue.”  
  
The commander gestures toward the plants in her hands, interwoven between her fingers, spilling over her palms, her lap like vines, like the long legs of a spider, spindly and slender, strong. The evening is setting in, the sky an array of colors like paints, and the fire adds shadows and color to places that she had never expected to find them in: his cheekbones, his hair, the scar on his mouth, the stubble on his jaw. Cullen is remarkable in the same way he is haunted; he exudes it, cannot escape it, perhaps like a plague. “Do those ward off demons, then?” he asks.  
  
Flidais shakes her head, moves to kneel in front of him, bequeathing the fairy lights to him, the aromas of magic and life swirling about them, fluttering like butterfly wings. They fall onto his shoulders, pooling in his lap, dressing the fur of his armor with breath, over the remnants of death. He touches them, dazed as he watches her, and she wonders if he can feel the tingles, the heat and coolness from behind his thick gloves. When she sits back down, her legs folded up beneath her, she smiles with teeth, eyes crinkling.  
  
“These—?”  
  
“Nightmares,” murmurs Flidais. Cullen swallows audibly, his tremors returning, albeit faintly. “They were rampant within my clan for a time, after mine were extinguished. We thought  _Fen’harel_ , the Dread Wolf, had come for us, but Keeper Deshanna could not find a trace of him.” She traces a petal with her thumb; talking feels as easy as breathing now, words finding her with ease. “Daisies and lavender: together, they soothe the terrors of our dreams. I… hope I’m not overstepping boundaries or anything.”  
  
“No! No, of course not.”  
  
“Oh. Good, then.”  
  
Cullen watches the elf as she brings the largest blossom, the one that is the size of her palm, up to his forehead, and she feels it heat up, comfortable, not like flames that only hurt when touched, licking at sides and edges that sting and hurt. The commander releases a breath, relieved, hitched, and she can only let out a simple chuckle, letting go. “I’ve just noticed that the dark circles around your eyes aren’t getting any lighter,” she explains quietly, biting her lip, averting her gaze now. “I know you spend nights in the pews, sometimes. I take walks. Sometimes the mark hurts; sometimes I need to weave something for myself, and I’ve seen you praying.”  
  
He says that he had not meant to worry her, and she purses her lips into a thin line, frustrated in her inability to voice what her thoughts are telling her to say: a god that does not answer, something that she understands, whispers that do not mean a thing anymore, names and rumors that never belonged to anyone, worries and headaches and delicate hands holding shoulders down, screaming in an attempt to bring her back, bring him back, bring  _them_  back. Words that do not mean a thing to him and a vocabulary largely lost, magic that cancels out and embraces the opposition, golden eyes like molten suns that have seen too much, known so little, carried him through tests that make him question his Maker, and emeralds too big for her face, like deer, like gems, roaring with a ferocity that speaks mountains amongst legends of anthills.  
  
Flidais does not reach out to touch him, and neither does he. She does not re-light the fire when it begins to dwindle. She looks up, though, to find him gazing at her, and the elf does not blush, does not stammer, only smiles, gentle. “You deserve to walk the Fade without terrors hounding your steps, Commander.”  
  
They are silent for a while. How long, she cannot really say, only that she has counted a great number of heartbeats, of horses whinnying, before he stands. She stands too, and he towers over her, and he is a lamb in lion’s clothing wielding a sword and a shield and a promise of protection.  
  
“Cullen,” he corrects, and he smiles.  
  


*

****  
The candlelight makes his armor appear golden, the ground shaking beneath them, fire eating the town outside as the Red Templars begin to tear them down, and she wipes invisible sweat from her brow as she meets him halfway, the boy called Cole holding the grand chancellor up, and Cullen is speaking of death and spite, and her stomach twists.  
  
“No,” she firmly replies. “We are  _not_  dying—”  
  
“Flidais, there’s a bloody  _dragon_ —a-an  _archdemon_ , possibly—”  
  
“I’ve killed dragons before, I can—”  
  
He grabs her arm and squeezes and she does not want to add to any of the nightmares, any of the demons; she can see the fright in his eyes, the desperation to keep something, someone alive. “There has to be another way,” she argues, pitifully. “Cullen, we’re not letting the Elder One win. Not like this.”  
  
Roderick speaks through Cole, and then through his mouth, and Cullen lets go, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, going toward the pommel of his sword but then faltering, falling. He is scared; everyone is scared.  _She_  is scared. But then  _summer pilgrimage_  and  _passage through the mountains_  and yes,  _yes_ , she could do that, distract, attack, let the dragon hear her, taste her blood before she bathes in its own.  
  
Flidais spins ’round to face him, the commander, and his expression is grim, grows more and more upset as he meets her eyes. “The first avalanche stopped him for a little while. I’ll bury Haven. I’ll buy you enough time to get to the peak. You _have_  to: this is your only chance,  _our_  only chance.”  
  
“I’m not sending you to your death!”  
  
“You are not  _sending_  me anywhere,” she grits out, stepping closer, making herself appear bigger than she actually is. “I am  _choosing_  this fate.”  
  
“We need you—”  
  
“—to seal rifts, yes, I understand that. But to battle  _those_ , an Inquisition still needs to  _exist_. I am not throwing everyone’s lives away so that we can hide and die while the world burns around us. That isn’t what we stand for, Commander. You, of all people, should understand that.”  
  
He deflates, and he opens his mouth to argue, but nothing comes out. There is blood on his cheek; she reaches up to wipe it off, and his hand catches her wrist in a tender grip, forgoing the chaos around them for one moment, and she swipes her thumb over the dried crimson, and he squeezes.  
  
“Maybe you’ll get lucky,” he offers.  
  
“Of course I will,” she responds, letting her hand fall back to her staff, undoing the fastening that keeps it in place in favor of leaning on it. “I’ve always been a sucker for dramatic scenes.”  
  
“I’m aware.”  
  
Flidais smiles and he returns it, reaching into a pouch on his belt and taking out a white flash of something. Cullen drops it in her hand, closes it for her, a secret, hands warm and familiar, reassuring, real.  
  
A flower. She can feel the petals, the stub of a stem.  
  
Her stomach is a knot.  
  
“We’ll give you a signal when we’re far enough away,” he says quickly, the noises outside exponentially louder now, like they are trapped in a heart that is beating erratically, two hammers controlling the sounds of it.  
  
“Cullen—”  
  
“You deserve to walk without terrors hounding your steps, Your Worship.”  
  


*

**  
**As she falls, she corrects, “Flidais,” clutching a daisy that is as large as her palm.


End file.
